| The History of the Brooklyn Bridge: mybrooklynbridge.com, the home of Friends of the Brooklyn Bridge |
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It started as a dream.
A great bridge soaring above the East River connecting the huge metropolises of Manhattan and
Brooklyn, then accessible to each other only by ferry.
In the winter of 1866-67, ice flows brought the dream to reality when ferry service halted for two weeks, bringing commerce to a standstill, and state officials pushed for the immediate construction of an East River Bridge.
Even now, nearly 125 years after opening, the Brooklyn Bridge is still considered one of the major landmarks and engineering marvels of New York City. Each day, tourists flock to the center walkway of the bridge sharing the vistas with commuters walking, biking and driving to work.
The 1,595.5 foot span officially opened on May 24, 1883, at 2:00 PM and was 50% larger than any suspension bridge to date and was the first to use steel cables.
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| John Roebling, Washington Roebling and Emily Roebling were the engineers who completed the Brooklyn Bridge working from a design much
like the Covington and Cincinnati Suspension Bridge they built in 1866. |
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Constructing the Bridge - The Design
Construction began in 1870, using a design by John A. Roebling, the inventor of wire cable and an accomplished bridge builder. Four years earlier, Roebling completed the Covington and Cincinnati Suspension Bridge over the Ohio River, a miniature prototype of the Brooklyn Bridge. He called the Brooklyn design "the perfect equilibrium of nature."
Anchored across the lower East River by two neoGothic towers and a delicate lacework of steel-wire cables, the soaring lines of the Brooklyn Bridge frame the dramatic buttressed gothic towers, constructed entirely of granite. Each of the cables is composed of 5,296 galvanized steel wires with a total length of wire used at 14,357 miles.
The Brooklyn Bridge was to be John Roebling's crowning achievement. Working with his son Washington, he proposed a revolutionary design, with two 300ft towers that would dominate the New York skyline. The towers would be built in sunken foundations in the East River to support the weight of the new steel cables, which made a mile-long bridge possible. The cables would be spun in place strand by strand and pulled across the East River.
Just three days into construction, disaster struck when John Roebling was injured as he was surveying the site for the Brooklyn Tower. His foot was badly crushed when a ferry struck the Brooklyn waterfront pilings. His toes were amputated, without anesthetic. He believed in hydrotherapy, and dismissed his doctor. He insisted that water be poured onto the wound, but the unsterilized water brought on lockjaw. He died in agony just two weeks later.
Managing the project - Washington & Emily Roebling
At the age of 32, Roebling's son Washington took over the project. Having worked as his father's assistant, he was now in charge of one of the most prestigious engineering endeavors of the Victorian age.
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In 1870, construction began on the caissons to build the massive 300-foot tall towers to support
the suspension cables. The towers were the tallest structures in New York City for over thirty years.
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He designed "pneumatic caissons" to place the foundations of the towers into the riverbed. They were enormous, airtight, wooden mining chambers filled with compressed air allowed shift after shift of workers to dig their way beneath the East River. As the depth and compression increased, workers began suffering from an "unknown" disease that brought on pains in the muscles and joints (the "bends"), deafness, embarrassed breathing, vomiting, paralysis, fainting and sometimes even sudden death. During a fire in the Brooklyn caisson in December, 1871, Washington himself became a victim to the "bends."
For the next eleven years, Washington worked from his bed in Brooklyn Heights with his wife, Emily, becoming the public face of the Roebling family. He was left partially paralyzed, deaf, and unable to speak. Although he was unable to leave his bed, Washington Roebling wanted to continue to direct the construction of the bridge from his room. From this moment on, Emily became her husband's main assistant.
As her husband watched the construction from his bedroom window, Emily made inspection visits to the Brooklyn Bridge every day. As time progressed, the number of jobs and tasks Emily Roebling took on increased. She was soon doing it all - answering the questions of the bridge officials, representatives and contractors. It is said that she answered their questions so well that many of these businessmen believed that she was the Chief Engineer.
After a time, it was common gossip that hers was the real mind behind the hugely difficult undertaking and that this, the most monumental engineering triumph of the age, was actually the product of a woman, an idea that was taken in some quarters to be both preposterous and calamitous. This was not an age when women, especially affluent women, were supposed to be much more than ornaments.
Building the Bridge - The Cost
As the bridge approached completion, expectations were high. The cost of the bridge came to $15,099,263.56. The land costs were $3.8 million, making the total construction costs almost 60% above the original estimate of $7 million. Labor costs were overshadowed by the cost of materials. Granite and limestone costs topped $2.75 million, while the daily wages paid to the men ranged from $1.75 (laborer) to $4 (blacksmith/mason) for a $2.4 million total.
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The Brooklyn Bridge opened on May 24, 1883, with a great fireworks show. It quickly became a vital connection between the two
cities. Watch an 1899 movie by Thomas Edison Studios of a train travelling over the bridge.
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The Brooklyn tower was completed in May 1875 and the New York tower in July, 1876. A month later shortly after a loop of three-quarter-inch-diameter rope had been run around pulleys in the anchorages and over the two towers, E.F. Farrington, the bridge's master mechanic, became the first person to cross the river via the new bridge. Seated in a boatswain's chair, Farrington took a 22-minute journey watched by jubilant spectators and greeted in Manhattan with steam whistles and canon heralding his arrival.
A week before the bridge's official opening, Emily Roebling asked to cross the bridge in a horse-drawn carriage to demonstrate its safety. She chose an unusual symbol of victory as a traveling partner: a live rooster. On the day itself, the chief engineer watched the festivities from his window in Brooklyn before he and Emily hosted a reception attended by President Chester Arthur.
Crossing the Bridge - Then
When it opened on May 24, 1883, under a great shower of fireworks and a similarly extravagant outpouring of oratory - it cost a penny to walk across the pedestrian promenade and 10 cents to drive a one-horse wagon on the roadway.
The original toll structure reflects a very different time: It cost 5 cents for a cow or horse to cross, 2 cents for a hog or a sheep. The original configuration included two lanes for horse drawn carriages, two lanes for street cars and an elevated walkway between the then independent cities of New York City and Brooklyn. 150,300 people crossed the bridge on opening day along with 1,800 vehicles.
Growing & changing cities - Brooklyn & Manhattan
In 1869 Brooklyn, with 400,000 inhabitants, had less than half the population of Manhattan. When the bridge opened, Brooklyn had 580,000 inhabitants; by 1898 when Brooklyn became a borough of New York City, the number had grown to 1 million. Cable-driven railway cars started service in September, 1883; within two years, ridership had more than doubled, from 16,500 to 36,500 riders, and the cars were running 24 hours a day.
Eventually, other bridges spanned the East River - the Williamsburg in 1903, the Manhattan and Queensboro in 1909 - and the number of people who crossed the Brooklyn Bridge diminished, despite elimination of pedestrian tolls in 1891 and vehicle tolls in 1911. The peak year was 1907, when 426,298 crossed; by 1930, this number had dwindled to 171,110.
By 1930, Brooklynites outnumbered Manhattanites.
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| Thousands of New Yorkers used the Brooklyn Bridge to escape Manhattan following the attacks of 9/11. Just two years later, the scene
was repeated during the Blackout of 2003. |
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Crossing the Bridge - Today
Over 137,563 vehicles drive the bridge daily.
Over a million people walk or bike across the Brooklyn Bridge annually. It is a way to work, a way to exercise, and a way to enjoy life.
The views of lower Manhattan, the Brooklyn waterfront, the Statue of Liberty and the East River are unparalleled. The walk is part of nearly every tour package to New York City.
On 9/11 and the Blackout of 2003, the Brooklyn Bridge walkway became an important route for thousands trying to reach their homes outside of Manhattan. As the closest bridge to the World Trade Center, streams of people filled the walkway and the roadbeds escaping lower Manhattan after the terrorist attacks. After each event, pedestrians flooded the New York City Department of Transportation with phone calls saying that the bridge was swaying and groaning, and that they felt seasick and weaved as they walked. The weight of thousands of pedestrians on the bridge far outweigh the weight of vehicular traffic. Place people into the same amount of square footage as a vehicle, and the weight is greater.
Engineers argue whether the bridge was designed to handle hundreds of thousands of pedestrians at one time and what damage it may cause. The other issue is vibrations caused by the resonance of thousands of people walking in unison. Armies march in "break step" when they cross over a bridge. John Roebling's Brooklyn Bridge design has a suspension system, a diagonal stay system, and a stiffening truss which led him to say, "The bridge may sag, but it will not fall."
Sources:
*http://www.catskillarchive.com/rrextra/bbstory.Html
*http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/programmes/programme_archive/seven_wonders_brooklyn_bridge_04.shtml
*http://www.pausingtoremember.net/Emily's_Bridge.html
*http://www.newsday.com/community/guide/lihistory/ny-history-hs601a,0,6305725.story
*http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/030630/30brooklyn_print.htm
*"Sandhog: Building the Brooklyn Bridge, 1871", EyeWitness to History, www.eyewitnesstohistory.com (2005).
*http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/buildingbig/wonder/structure/brooklyn.html
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 Friends of the Brooklyn Bridge is a program of the Dumbo Improvement District, a non profit 501(c)3 organization. |
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Learn the History
Did you know..... Ice flows made the city push the idea of a bridge.
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